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Falling Again

Release date: 27 January 2014Investigative reporter Fiona McCarthy is following a hot story. Rumor has it a white supremacist group, financed by the deep pockets of a local businessman, is moving into Portland. In Washington, D.C., to attend a wedding, she wants to find out if her connections on Capitol Hill can give her leads to find the name of that person.

Nick St. Claire is an internationally known photojournalist. He’s also the “baby brother” of Fiona’s good friend, Amanda. Just back from a rough overseas assignment, he runs into Fiona on his home turf in DC and decides to follow up on their meeting six months before in Portland.

In spite of her doubts about his motives and her irritation at the rather large dose of self-confidence he possesses, Fiona goes to dinner with him. One dinner turns into two, which becomes a weekend in his bed. Back home in Portland, she writes Nick off as a bit of fun on vacation and buries herself in her story. Then Nick arrives in Portland on assignment and makes it obvious he wants more than a fling.

But when her story and his assignment dangerously intersect at a mysterious cabin in the Mt. Hood National Forest, their relationship is tested. Can their feelings for each other survive her need to get the story and his to frame the perfect shot? Or will the bad guys wreck not only the peace of laid-back Portland but also the chance of happily-ever-after for Nick and Fiona?

by Peggy Bird

ContemporarySensuality Level: Sensual

Author Bio: Peggy Bird is a writer and glass artist who lives and works in Vancouver, Washington across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon where most of her stories are set and where her three daughters, four grandchildren and two granddogs live. Find Peggy at www.peggybirdwrites.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter @Peggybirdwrites.

An excerpt from Falling Again:

“He knows more than he told me. I can see it on his face. But how the hell can I get him to say it out loud?” Fiona McCarthy muttered to herself, frowning at the notes she’d hastily scribbled after her lunch with a just-departed Senate staffer. Her frustration at her inability to get more out of him was at stratospheric levels. If only she had the nerve to chase him across Capitol Hill and stick to him like a tick until he told her what she wanted to know.

She was enjoying the image of riding piggyback on the staffer, yelling her questions in his ear while he tried to go about his business, when a male voice interrupted.

“Fiona? I don’t know if you remember me. We met about six months ago in Portland.” The man belonging to the voice was standing beside her table, a leather jacket in one hand and a battered messenger bag slung over his other shoulder.

When she looked up she quickly shifted to what she hoped was a welcoming expression. “Of course I remember you, Nick. We met at your sister’s house, Danny and Jake’s engagement party.”

She was not likely to forget him. Six-feet-something of broad-shouldered, slim-hipped male. Chestnut brown hair tamed with some sort of product to keep it tousled and in place at the same time. Carefully maintained fashionable stubble, which didn’t manage to hide dimples when he smiled, as he was doing now. Sleepy, just-got-out-of-bed hazel eyes capable of melting the knees or any other part of a woman’s anatomy.

Add a small gold hoop earring and a gold stud in his left ear, cargo pants he might have had tailor-made, a shirt setting off a better set of chest muscles than any she’d ever seen, (dressed or undressed) and if she hadn’t known it before, she knew from seeing him she wasn’t in Oregon any more. No one in Portland looked this good.

Ah, yes. Portland. Where her friend Amanda—his sister—lived. The sister who called him baby brother. The baby brother who was, from the way Amanda talked, barely out of his teens. Since Fiona didn’t think she was old enough to qualify as a cougar, it meant her less than platonic thoughts about Nick made her a cradle robber. Not how she wanted to think of herself. Which was the important point to keep in mind; not how hot he looked.